The Wooden Nickel (26 page)

Just up ahead he hears the
Bad Pussy
’s Isuzu screaming across the line, then it’s the whole Shag Island fleet blowing their christly horns like a herd of elk.

His H&H cap is black and his hands are burned red by the blast from the companionway. His clothes are smoking and the hair
of his arms is burned off. The mad-dog siren of the Coast Guard twenty-six-foot lifeboat is on top of him now, they’ve got
a hose out and they’re spraying the whole boat with seawater, including Lucky himself because someone has yelled, “That son
of a bitch is on fire!”

He yells back,
“I ain’t,”
and they stop spraying and come alongside. Pretty soon there’s five or six coasties over the rail shooting fire extinguishers
in every corner like they’re fumigating his boat for bugs. They lash the
Wooden Nickel
onto the twenty-six’s side, preparing to take him in tow. “Ain’t nothing wrong with the boat,” he tries to explain. “Scrub
her down with some Ajax, she’ll be clean as new.”

The lifeboat skipper comes aboard and orders him out of his boat. “You’ll have to ride with us, captain.” He’s about eighteen
years old. Then he starts sticking his head into the engine compartment, which is still half filled with brown carbon dioxide
foam. He looks right at the propane bottle and hose but they’re so wet and blackened the kid doesn’t know what they are. “These
older vessels,” he says, “no sense pushing them too hard.”

Over the lifeboat’s radio he can hear Shep Hallett on the race channel announcing the winner’s time:
BAD PUSSY, WING TWENTY-NINE, ISUZU-POWERED, DRIVER PRISCILLA SHAVER, SPEED THIRTY-FIVE POINT ONE. SECOND PLACE, BODACIOUS,
MERCURY-POWERED. THIRD, WHITE ELEPHANT. DID NOT FINISH: ONE BOAT, WOODEN NICKEL, DUE TO ENGINE TROUBLE
.

Then he hears the big diesels circling around for the final event.

The Coast Guard reads him their fire sermon off a printed card, and after he signs a paper saying he won’t sue them for any
damage during the tow, they give him back his boat and turn him loose. He grabs onto an old kelp-covered Stoneport mooring
to check things out. Down below, the new turbocharger unit’s cremated beyond recognition and the inside of the cabin is a
black hole with a leftover stench like roasted cowshit, all the paint charred, gray sludge over everything, six inches of
fire foam over the floorboards, coils of floating pot warp and half-melted mattress chunks drifting beneath the ashes of Ronette’s
blue curtains. Doesn’t smell of gas, though, so he disconnects the propane hose and fitting and heaves the five-pound cylinder
over the stern.

It seems impossible an engine would run after such punishment, but on a hunch he tries. He opens the gas line to see if she’ll
kick over, gives her a squirt of ether, and after a little cranking a couple of cylinders answer the call. Fucking Saginaw
engines, they are a miracle, kick the living shit out of them and they ask for more. Running on three cylinders, he engages
the mechanical bilge pump off of the power takeoff and watches a few hundred gallons of black foamy scum pour over the transom
into the crystal-clear waters of Stoneport Reach.

He’s with Reggie and Danny Thurston and Clayton Pettingill and some of the younger guys, waiting for the dark of the Stoneport
evening to settle so the street dance can begin. Already the band is up on stage, they try a guitar lick, shorting out one
amplifier with a clap of stage lightning, then try out some more amps and speakers. Their drumhead reads the dead crabs. Used
to be decent country-western at the Stoneport races, now it’s nothing but rock and roll.

Reggie’s got a quart of Old Mr. Boston apricot brandy in a brown paper bag, he’s passing it out to Travis Hammond and Danny
and Clayton, then Norton Gross walks up and Reggie hesitates a minute because everyone knows there’s something wrong with
Norton, he gets some kind of seizures and he’s not supposed to drink, but Reggie Dolliver says, “What the fuck, Norton, it’s
race day.” Norton makes a funny noise when he slugs on it and his eyes bug right through his Coke-bottle glasses as the stuff
goes down.

Lucky takes a hit for his engine and another for the woman with the Goldwing 29. “I seen this cocksucking striped pot buoy
right on the south slope of Toothpick Shoal.”

“Shag Island,” Danny Thurston says. “I figured one of these days they’d be spreading out.”

“Lunt gave them a rubber and a bullet,” Travis adds.

Reggie Dolliver doesn’t give a shit because it’s not Split Cove territory, and he’s not even fishing anymore, he’s into home
security. He’s still urging them on. “Wouldn’t be a bad idea to get them ass-holes, while you still got some territory left.”

“Ought to go after them,” says Norton Gross. He’s reaching for the apricot brandy again, this time his eyes are popping out
before he gets his hands on it. “Teach them a damn lesson.”

“It ain’t the old days,” Danny Thurston says. “I got three hundred thousand sunk in this business. I can’t afford to lose
it. You guys see any trouble, call the Marine Patrol. Let the state handle it, that’s what we pay our taxes for.”

“What the fuck are they going to do about it?” Reggie says. “They’re cops, they cruise around all day counting life jackets,
what do they care who’s fishing on whose ledge? Lobster territory ain’t law anyhow. It’s tradition. You want to get something
done, do it yourself.”

“Them Shavers are trouble,” says Art Pettingill’s giant kid Clayton. He’s around sixteen, but he’s hammering down the apricot
brandy like it’s Prohibition. “I heard one of them bastards shot down the mail plane out there, just like they was shooting
crows.”

Lucky says, “It’s the woman that’s carrying that striped buoy up on the wheelhouse roof.”

Norton Gross says, “I’m getting me a four-ten shotgun and keeping that son of a bitch aboard.” Norton has a walleye like all
his family on both sides. Just like a fucking flounder, one eye looks at you and the other’s looking at something else. Old
man’s the same way. He’s just a kid with his voice breaking but he says, “I see one of them cocksuckers setting inshore, I’ll
shoot first, ask questions later.”

“Shoot with what,” Clayton says, “your dick?”

“My four-ten. I’m getting it.”

Lonnie Gross shows up now from out of the row of blue porta-johns, hitching up his pants. He’s a square-shaped husky guy,
built like a bear. Lucky’s seen him lift a half-ton mooring block off the bottom with his bare hands, hooked her right over
the cleat and reset her without using a hoist. Lonnie Gross grabs the brandy from his kid and slurps on it, then shows his
hand around, same way he used to show the hairs he got from jerking off. Now he’s got a whole thumb missing, not even a stump,
looks like the hand of a fucking raccoon. They say the thumb is what makes us human, and Lonnie Gross has only got one left.
“Dynamite cap,” he says.

Norton Gross follows his old man with his straight eye like he ought to get the Purple Heart. The two of them look at each
other with their good eyes, the wandering eyes meanwhile search the ground like metal detectors, looking for something else.
“I’m getting me some of them dynamite caps,” Norton Gross says, a chip off the old block.

Reggie Dolliver’s got another bottle out now, getting the kids worked up over the territory. He loves it, reminds him of his
convict days. Then he points behind Lucky with his big shit-eating grin. Lucky turns to see Reggie’s old jailhouse buddy Ronette
Hannaford driving right up to them in her chartreuse Probe. She rolls down the window and says, “Jesus, Lucky, look at them
clothes. You look like you got struck by lightning.”

She parks and hops out in cutoff jean shorts and Nike sneakers and a green tank top she could be arrested for. Reggie Dolliver
turns to Lucky and says, “You let your sternman dress like that?”

Ronette says, “He don’t let me wear nothing on that half-assed boat, but he ain’t the captain on dry land.”

He takes her over to the big Stoneport municipal wharf, where the Dead Crabs are into their first set already and the kids
are starting to choose up partners and dance around. They get two beers and a plateful of chili dogs with peppers and onions
and head out on the long pier. From there they can see the last rays of sunset over the lighthouse on Jackoff Point. The light
switches on for the night while they’re watching it, three red flashes just like thirty years ago, though he doesn’t have
to decode it like he used to with the Stoneport girls, it’s already done. The sun sets fire to the Virgins for a moment, then
it’s gone and another race day is over, a year’s worth of blown engines and broken dreams. He can’t figure why anyone does
it, except that when you think of it, nothing else matters. Once you know who’s got the world’s fastest lobster boat, everything
else kind of falls into place.

Ronette separates their two hot dogs under the mound of chili, takes her own and scarfs it down. She’s starting to eat for
two. She looks him over as if something’s missing. “Hey, you’re not holding no trophy, are you?”

“No need to talk about it,” he says.

Half the lobstermen are staying for the street dance, half are headed home, they turn on their running lights as they pass
the Narrows and head out into the darkening water. Some of them have a three-hour ride, but they’re used to it. They switch
their radars on but don’t bother to look in the hoods, they can all see in the dark. Most of their life’s spent in the pitch-black
hours before the sun comes up. They’re off, drinking and laughing. In the dead calm of evening the sound carries all the way
back to town.

Now the Stoneport girls appear from the crowded hilly little streets in packs of four or five but ready to be detached, sexy
as ever, daughters and granddaughters of the girls they used to drag under the tuna wharf. Christ, one or two have a Lunt
look to them, they could be anyone’s.

“Hey Lucky, you’re supposed to be staring at
me.
” Ronette spins him around and gets a light off his cigarette.

“Fucked the boat up that last race,” he says. “Might limp her home, but she ain’t going fishing for a while.”

“I heard. You was the talk of the town up at the Blue Claw. Racing some island woman and they say your boat caught fire. Deputy
said you was burned alive.”

“Bet you didn’t give a shit when you heard that.”

She kisses his ear with her wet chili dog lips. “I took off my apron and come right down. Somebody’s got to give a shit, Mr.
Luck, and I ain’t seen Mrs. Lunt running your way.”

There’s a little breeze off the water now it’s dark, and it does feel good on the singed skin of his arms and face. She edges
up close to him on the tar-smelling pierhead and gives him the last inch of her chili dog. “I been thinking about it all the
way down. I can take a second job at the RoundUp, Big Andy’s always after me, then I can help pay for the boat.”

“You got two jobs already. Anyway, you’re the sternman. You ain’t supposed to cover expenses.”

“Lucky, look at me.” She pulls his face around with both hands so he’s right up close to her, he can feel the heat of her
Marlboro on his ear. “I ain’t just your sternman anymore.”

“I know,” he says. “I got to pay social security on you.”

“That ain’t what I meant. Don’t you hear nothing I say?”

“Know what else, Ron? We got some fucking trouble coming up.”

“Well it ain’t going to happen tonight. Tonight we’re going to forget it all and dance.”

“Dance? I ain’t danced since Danny Thurston’s wedding.”

“You been keeping the wrong company. You don’t exercise, that heart’ll go soft as an old tomato.” She drags him past a bunch
of Coast Guard men in their T-shirt uniforms, their eyes glazed over from testing the evidence, then through a clump of Stoneport
kids standing in a fog of pot smoke, probably bought off the Coast Guard too, son of a bitches never waste an ounce. She drags
him right past the Orphan Point gang, who are still huddled with Reggie Dolliver planning to shoot up a few boats. One of
them whistles when Ronette starts to dance, and she is great-looking tonight in the green low-cut top with her tits peeking
out over it like a clutch of wild duck eggs in the grass. Then he remembers why it is they’re starting to look so big, it’s
not just Clyde’s saline, she’s going to be bulging all over before too long. The thought makes his hand reach into the deep
back pocket of his work pants for the pint of 101-proof Wild Turkey. Nobody watches his habits anymore. He pulls it up and
takes a slug and offers it to Ronette but she says, “No darling, I ain’t supposed to, it says right on the bottle. Not yet.
That’s why I like them draft beers in the plastic cups, they don’t have no pregnancy label.”

Pregnant or not, she’s dancing all over the place like it was the Rolling Stones up there playing “Brown Sugar” and not a
bunch of clamdiggers that just met each other the night before. Lucky’s big rusty eight-cylinder body is trying to recall
what it was like to dance, but it gets mixed up with what it was like to fight, so he stands in one spot throwing long loopy
punches in her direction while she’s got her arms up in the air and her stern swaying and those big milky knockers sloshing
around in a tank top that glows like a bug zapper in the mercury-vapor light. She’s traveling and he’s standing still. Pretty
soon she’s spun off towards Reggie’s group to get another drink and he’s throwing punches towards a woman he’s never seen,
a hippie tourist with blond hair and glasses and tired little city tits under a T-shirt that says let lobsters live. He points
at her chest and yells, “What the fuck’s that?”

The hippie woman screams, “How would you like to be thrust headfirst into a boiling caldron?”

“Excuse me?” Lucky’s not sure he hears her right, twists his finger around to drill out his good ear, the starboard one on
the other side from the exhaust.

“Crustaceans feel
pain,
” the hippie woman shouts, “when they’re
scalded.
Just like you or me.” But she is dancing in a way he can keep up with, making deep swoops with her arms like she’s swimming
but staying in one place so he can throw punches at her till Ronette comes back.